


As It All Falls Down

by ifwehadamonkey



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifwehadamonkey/pseuds/ifwehadamonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene between episodes 1x21 Ragtag and 1x22 Beginning of the End, with Fitz in the med pod.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As It All Falls Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [msdevindanielle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msdevindanielle/gifts).



> This is for the fabulous msdevindanielle for the fitzsimmons secret santa exchange. Her prompt was a missing scene/mission and i decided to fill in the blank in the med pod, while Jemma was sleeping. i've never written any fan fiction before, so i hope you like it :)

It took them an hour to sink to the bottom of the ocean. An hour is a long time when you’ve nothing to listen to but the isolated murmur of the ocean and the quiet breathing of Jemma Simmons.

Rigging the EKG to send out a distress signal was relatively easy, and while he wasn’t as proficient as Jemma, he’d managed to find a sling for his broken arm and some gauze to help stop the bleeding on his and Jemma’s head wounds. His initial panic with Jemma’s unconsciousness had faded when her breathing indicated that she’d slipped into sleep.

He’d done the math. He knew the chances of them surviving were going down by the minute, but that didn’t stop his brain from trying a hundred different scenarios, each one no better than the last. He needed Jemma and her near boundless optimism, but he couldn’t bear to wake her just yet, not when he didn’t have anything but bad news.

If it weren’t for, well, everything, he could almost pretend they were back on the Bus or the Academy and she’d just fallen asleep again after a long assignment. The fall had mussed her hair, which she wouldn’t like at all, but he did.

He liked everything about Jemma Simmons, and that was the problem. He was very much afraid that he had slipped from like…to something else. Something he hadn’t quite wrapped his head around, but it was real and it scared him. He loved her, of course he did, she was his best friend, but that love that he’d felt for so long had changed. It had changed him. He’d always known, theoretically, that he would take a bullet for her, if it came to that. The difference now was that he’d take a bullet for her because he had to, because he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her.

She was so brilliant, so brilliant she made him forget that he used to be that shy boy from Glasgow who didn’t know how to talk to people and was constantly getting in trouble for taking his mum’s appliances apart. He didn’t know what would’ve happened to that boy if he hadn’t had the pure luck to be paired up with Jemma Simmons in the lab.

She knew him so well, just as he knew her, and knowing her as he did, he knew he could never tell her how he felt. He’d seen the men she’d dated. She definitely had a type, and that type was the opposite of Leo Fitz. Besides which, he’d never do anything that would jeopardize their friendship, but that didn’t stop him from feeling, from longing for something different. It didn’t stop him from looking at her a little too long. It didn’t stop his heart from speeding up a little bit when he first saw her in the mornings. It didn’t stop him from thinking she was the most beautiful person he’d ever met.

He would have followed her to the ends of the earth, but it was looking more and more like the end would be here in this box. Fitz blamed himself for that. It was his anger that had spurred him to defy Garrett. It was his idea to make a run for it on board the bus. It was his loyalty and blind faith in Ward, his inability to see the truth that had gotten them here. Despite everything, despite seeing it with his own two eyes, it was hard for him to believe that Ward would have done this to them, to him. He had no idea what was happening with Coulson and the team, but he hoped they’d be able to take down Garrett, at least, and Ward.

He couldn’t think of Ward now. He found it hard to think of anything besides Jemma, and pointless besides. He’d always thought about her though, hadn’t he? She was so much a part of his life, a part of him that he’d never questioned that space she’d taken up inside his heart, inside his head.

He reached a slightly shaky hand over and gently brushed the hair off her face, letting his hand linger on her hair a second or two longer than necessary.

She was a part of him, and she always would be, no matter what happened, but God, he wanted more time. Ten years was not enough, no amount of time would be. He wanted a chance, and as the minutes ticked by, that want grew, until he was desperate with it, a chance to see if they could ever be more than best friends. His brain didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t her type, or that she’d never given any indication that she felt the same way; he wanted a chance at that future. He wanted the chance to show her how he felt. He wanted all of those little things that he’d always scoffed at, the handholding, the dinners by candlelight, and the whispers in the dark.

Was this love then? Such a small word for a feeling so big he thought he could drown in it.

The odds had never been more stacked against them and Fitz wanted to rail and weep at the unfairness of it all, but that would accomplish nothing. Looking about at the supplies strewn on the floor of the med pod, his stomach dropped even more. He had always been arrogant when came to his intelligence, he knew his worth as a scientist, but the years of study and hours of work had never prepared him for anything like this. They should probably add a scenario similar to this to the training roster at the Academy, if it survived Hydra. Despite their circumstances, Fitz had to believe that S.H.I.E.L.D. would survive, that good would win over evil.

He never wanted to imagine a world without Jemma Simmons in it. She’d be much more able to adapt to life without him than vice versa. She was social and she loved making new friends. Without Jemma beside him, he’d go back to being that socially awkward kid, not that he was a social butterfly now, but she made everything…better. Yeah…she’d be okay.

He knew she’d be waking soon, but until then, he let his gaze roam over her face. She was so beautiful, and everything he never knew he wanted.

He saw her hand twitch and knew it was only a matter of minutes before she woke up. He sat back and waited; waited for Jemma to wake up, waited to see what happened next.


End file.
